American Economic Review
ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)
Leveling the Playing Field: Sincere and Sophisticated Players in the Boston Mechanism
American Economic Review
(pp. 1636–52)
Abstract
Empirical and experimental evidence suggests different levels of sophistication among families in the Boston Public School student assignment plan. We analyze the preference revelation game induced by the Boston mechanism with sincere players who report their true preferences and sophisticated players who play a best response. We characterize the set of Nash equilibrium outcomes as the set of stable matchings of a modified economy, where sincere students lose priority to sophisticated students. Any sophisticated student weakly prefers her assignment under the Pareto-dominant Nash equilibrium of the Boston mechanism to her assignment under the recently adopted student-optimal stable mechanism. (JEL D82, I21)Citation
Pathak, Parag A., and Tayfun Sönmez. 2008. "Leveling the Playing Field: Sincere and Sophisticated Players in the Boston Mechanism." American Economic Review 98 (4): 1636–52. DOI: 10.1257/aer.98.4.1636JEL Classification
- I21 Analysis of Education
- I28 Education: Government Policy